Chapter 28

THURSDAY AT A FEW MINUTES BEFORE NOON, I walked into Carmine’s for my weekly meeting with Clarice and Wendy stopped me just inside the door. We were going to have to change our meeting time once classes at SCU started.

“Special instructions today,” Wendy said. I glanced over at the usual booth. Clarice sat on one side and a couple sat opposite her. “Clarice wants you to just sit next to her, pull out your pad and start sketching them. No greeting and no talking. I’ll bring you lunch when you’re done.”

“Could I take a Coke with me?” I asked. She poured a glass and handed it to me.

I turned my music player on so I wouldn’t be distracted by whatever they were talking about and did as instructed. These weren’t my typical kind of models, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought they were typical people. He was pretty big. Even sitting down, I’d have to estimate he was well over six feet tall and carried about forty extra pounds. You could see it in his face, but he carried the weight pretty well-distributed. His complexion was dark and I’d have guessed that he was Indian, but that was based more on his wife than on him.

She was definitely Indian and also carried a few extra pounds—and a baby. She calmly sat opposite Clarice with a portion of her sari pulled up to expose an ample breast with the child happily having lunch. The only move that they made from where they were when I sat down was that he put his arm protectively across her shoulders—perhaps a warning to me that this was his territory.

It was beautiful.

I drew. In fact, I loved what I was seeing. These were real people. I didn’t know if they were potential clients or if Clarice had lined them up as models. She wanted me to paint people other than Melody, Lissa, and Kate. I got lost in the drawing. A family. I couldn’t wait to transfer what I was drawing to a canvas. Cultures and races were lost in the simple and universal picture of a family. As I sketched, I memorized. The softened line of his jaw beneath a little extra weight and slightly puffy eyes that nonetheless looked with love on his wife and child. Her exposed breast and the baby’s sucking cheeks. The pattern of her sari. The dot in the middle of her forehead and her dark, sparkling eyes.

I wasn’t really finished with the drawing, but Clarice tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention. I pulled the headset away from my ears as the mother casually pulled the baby off her tit and uncovered the other one to shift the baby over.

“Tony, this is Mr. and Mrs. Singh. Brijesh, Indira, this is Tony.”

I reached for Brijesh’s offered hand and nodded politely to Indira.

“Pleased to meet you,” I offered.

“And this is Mirium,” Indira said, stroking the baby’s head held against her breast. “She’s three months old.”

“She’s very sweet,” I offered.

“Tony, we’ve been discussing a family portrait. I explained that you had done several compositions with multiple people, but the Singhs want to see how you would approach their family. Would you like to show them?” Clarice asked.

“I loved doing this and could paint you from what I’m drawing right here,” I said. “The drawing is not complete, but a couple more sessions and I could do a family portrait.” I showed them the sketch.

They looked at the sketch and studied it. Both were smiling, but somehow reserved.

“Would you excuse us for a moment?” Brijesh asked. We nodded and the three left the table, headed for the door.

“Did I offend them?” I asked Clarice.

“I don’t think so. We’ve gone over the terms and what they want. They’ve seen your work and have a very specific scene they’d like painted. Relax and let’s see where it takes us.” They returned to the table.

“We like the sketching very much,” Brijesh said. “It is not what we want, though.”

Indira was digging in the baby bag next to her and pulled out a piece of paper.

“Can you paint this?” she asked, pushing the paper toward me.

It was a photograph, printed on a low quality inkjet. If it had been on photo paper instead of copier paper, it might have been a good photo. It showed the three of them, naked on a bed draped in gaily colored fabric. The baby was cradled against Indira’s left breast, but her right breast was fully exposed as was a fair portion of her dark bush. Her husband was curled up next to her and his equipment was barely concealed behind her right hip. There were a fair number of flesh-folds as their skin bunched up around the body-fat, but it came off looking lush rather than disgusting. It was a nice pose, but if they thought I could work from this...